Part 8

S. Aventine was much beloved and respected for his singular virtues by S. Camelian, Bishop of Troyes, who made him steward of the possessions of the church. He afterwards became the abbot of a monastery at Troyes, and spent all the money he could collect in redeeming captives. During the reign of Thierry, son of Clovis, he purchased of a band of soldiers, who were leading captives past his door, the boy Fidolus, whom for his gentleness and piety he learned greatly to love; and treating him as a son rather than as a servant, he made of him a monk, and finally, when he himself was old, and Fidolus had grown to man's estate, with the consent of the monks, he delivered over into his hands the government of the monastery, and he himself retired into a lone hermitage in the forest, and spent many years in a cave. When he opened his window, and thrust forth his hand full of crumbs, multitudes of little birds came fluttering up, and perched on his fingers, and ate the crumbs. He was ministered to by a monk, who, in bringing water from the river, sometimes caught in the pitcher very little fish. The gentle Aventine invariably returned the small fish to the river, for he would not hurt or destroy any animal, unless it were necessary. One day he trod on a snake and crushed it, so that it lay numb, and as though lifeless. Then he bent over it, and cherished it, till life returned, and it glided away. Once a stag, pursued by hunters, took refuge in his cave, and he closed the door on it, and hid it, till the hunters had passed further. One stormy night, a bear came roaring to the door of the cell, and strove to beat it in. The hermit, in terror, sang the song, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy holy one to see corruption!" and armed himself with prayer. Now when the sky grew white with dawn, Aventine opened his cell, and there lay the bear crouched on the threshold, and it stretched out its paw to him, and licked his feet. Then the hermit perceived that there was a splinter of wood in the paw, and he said, "Poor beast, thou wast in pain, and didst seek relief, and I thought that thou wast raging for my life." And he took the paw on his lap, drew forth the piece of wood, bathed and bandaged the wound, gave the bear his blessing, and let it depart.

Relics in the parish churches of Creney and S. Aventin and in the cathedral at Troyes. In Art he is represented drawing the splinter from the bear's paw.

S. AVENTINE OF CHATEAUDUN, B. C.

(6TH CENT.)

[Gallican Martyrologies. Authorities:--Mention in the life of his brother, S. Solemnis, and an ancient metrical French life.]

In the reign of Clovis there lived a Count John, at Chateaudun, who was married to Agnes, daughter of the Count of Blois. By her he had three sons, Solemnis, Aventine, and John, and a daughter Agnes, who died young.

Flavius, uncle of Agnes of Blois, was bishop of Chartres, and called thither Solemnis and Aventine for the purpose of attending to their education. As both showed signs of sanctity, he ordained both, whilst young; Solemnis was raised to the priesthood, and Aventine was appointed archdeacon.

On the death of Flavius, the clergy and people, with the king's consent, proceeded to elect Solemnis to fill the vacant see; but he, knowing their intention, fled, and hid himself in a cave outside the city. When he could not be found, the electors with one consent shouted, "Aventine is worthy!" that being the customary formulary of election. Thereupon, Aventine, much against his will, was drawn into the cathedral, and ordained priest, and consecrated bishop. Now Solemnis, from his place of retreat, heard the shout in the city, and knew that a bishop had been chosen. Yet he waited till he saw peasants returning along the road that ran by his retreat, and he overheard them speaking of the consecration of his brother Aventine. So he, deeming all further concealment unnecessary, came forth, and entered the city. Then, at once, a crowd surrounded him, and the roar of a thousand voices proclaimed, "Solemnis is worthy! Solemnis shall be bishop!" And he was drawn to the cathedral, vested in white, a mitre placed on his head, the pastoral staff put into his hands, and the bishops of the province there present, proclaimed him. And when this was done, men asked, "What shall be done with Aventine?" and he was sent to be bishop of Chateaudun, his native town. Then he went his way. And as he drew near to the city, there met him a leper, who ran towards him, and stopped, and cried out, "I am John, thy brother." He would have rejoiced to meet his brother, had he not seen that he was afflicted with leprosy; for which reason John had retired from the city, and fled from the society of men. Then the bishop ran to him, and fell on his neck, and his tears flowed over him, and he kissed him; and the flesh of John came again as the flesh of a little child, and he was made perfectly whole.

Of the works of the holy Aventine in his diocese little is known, save that he laboured in season and out of season in the ministry of God, and that he lived in a little cell outside the city gates, in the face of a rock. After the death of Solemnis, about 509, Aventine governed the whole Chartrain Church, and subscribed the council of Orleans, 511, as bishop of Chartres. Relics translated in 1853 to the parish church of S. Madeleine in Chateaudun.

S. THEOPHILUS THE PENITENT.

(ABOUT A.D. 528.)

[Commemorated by the Greeks on this day. Not by the Westerns, though the story is quoted by a great number of Latin writers. Authority:--The Greek account by Eutychianus, who pretends to have been a disciple of Theophilus, and declares that he relates what he had seen with his own eyes, and heard from the mouth of Theophilus himself. Metaphrastes embodied the narrative of Eutychianus in his great collection of the Lives of the Saints. For a full account of this strange story, see my "Myths of the Middle Ages."]

The following story must be received with caution. It has not received the sanction of the Western Church, and is probably a mere religious romance. It was very popular in the middle ages, and was frequently represented in sculpture and stained glass.

A few years before the Persian invasion, in 538, there lived, in the town of Adana in Cilicia, a priest named Theophilus, treasurer and archdeacon. He lived in strict observance of all his religious duties, was famous for his liberality to the poor, his sympathy with the afflicted, his eloquence in the pulpit, his private devotion, and severe asceticism. On the decease of the bishop, by popular acclamation he was summoned to the episcopal oversight of the diocese, but his deep humility urged him to refuse the office, even when it was pressed upon him by the metropolitan. A stranger was raised to the vacant seat, and the treasurer resumed the course of life he had pursued for so many years with credit to himself and advantage to the diocese, content in his own mind with having refused the office, which might have aroused his pride, and which certainly would have diminished his opportunities of self-sacrifice. Virtue invariably arouses the spirit of detraction, and Theophilus, by his refusal of the bishopric, was thrust into public notice, and attracted public attention. The consequence was, that the evil-minded originated slanders, which circulated widely, produced a revulsion of feeling towards Theophilus, and, what was generally reported, was accepted as substantially true. These stories reached the ears of the new bishop, he sent for the archdeacon, and, without properly investigating the charges, concluded he was guilty, and deprived him of his offices.

One would have supposed that the humility which had required the holy man to refuse a mitre, would have rendered him callous to the voice of slander, and have sustained him under deprivation. But the trial was too great for his virtue. He brooded over the accusations raised against him, and the wrongs inflicted upon him, till the whole object of his desire became the clearing of his character. He sought every available means of unmasking the calumnies of his malingers, and exposing the falsity of the charges raised against him. But he found himself unable to effect his object; one man is powerless against a multitude, and slander is a hydra which, when maimed in one head, produces others in the place of that struck off. Baffled, despairing, and without a friend to sustain his cause, the poor clerk sought redress in a manner which, a month before, would have filled him with horror. He visited a necromancer, who led him at midnight to a place where four cross-roads met, and there conjured up Satan, who promised to reinstate Theophilus in all his offices, and, what he valued more, to completely clear his character. The priest, to obtain these boons, signed away his soul with a pen dipped in his own blood, and abjured for ever Jesus Christ and His spotless Mother.

On the morrow, the bishop, discovering his error, how we know not, sent for Theophilus, and acknowledged publicly that he had been misled by false reports, the utter valuelessness of which he was ready frankly to acknowledge; and he asked pardon of the priest, for having unjustly deprived him of his office. The populace enthusiastically reversed their late opinion of the treasurer, and greeted him as a Saint and confessor.

For some days all went well, and in the excitement of a return to his former occupations, the compact he had made was forgotten. But after a while, as reason and quietness resumed their sway, the conscience of Theophilus gave him no rest. His face lost its colour, his brow was seamed with wrinkles, an unutterable horror gleamed out of his deep-set eyes. Hour by hour he prayed, but found no relief. At length he resolved on a solemn fast of forty days. This he accomplished, praying nightly in the Church of the Blessed Virgin, till the grey of morning stole in at the little window of the dome, and obscured the lamps. On the fortieth night, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him, and rebuked him for his sin. He implored her pardon and all-prevailing intercession, and this she promised him. The following night she re-appeared, and assured him that Christ had forgiven him at her prayer. With a cry of joy he awoke; and on his breast lay the deed which had made over his soul to Satan, obtained from the evil one by the mercy of the holy Mother of God.

The next day was Sunday. He rose, spent some time in acts of thanksgiving, and then went to church, where the divine liturgy was being celebrated. After the reading of the Gospel, he flung himself at the bishop's feet, and requested permission to make his confession in public. Then he related the circumstances of his fall, and showed the contract signed with his blood to the assembled multitude. Having finished his confession, he prostrated himself before the bishop, and asked for absolution. The deed was torn and burned before the people. He was reconciled, and received the blessed Sacrament; after which he returned to his house in a fever, and died at the expiration of three days. The story is probably a mere religious romance.

S. MODAN, AB.

(7TH CENT.)

[Aberdeen Breviary:--from which almost all that is known of his life is gathered.]

S. Modan was first monk, and then abbot of Mailros, in Scotland, and preached the faith in Stirling and at Falkirk. When old he retired among the mountains of Dumbarton, and there died. His body was kept till the change of religion, with honour, in the church of Rosneath.

B. HRABANUS MAURUS, B. C.

(A.D. 856.)

[From his life by Rodolph the priest, monk of Fulda, d. 865; and various writers of a later period.]

Rabanus, or Hrabanus Maurus, was one of the most illustrious writers of the 9th century. He was born at Mainz, in the year 788. When very young he was sent to the monastery of Fulda, where he was brought up. From thence he was sent to Tours, where he studied for some time under the famous Alcuin. He returned afterwards to Germany, into his monastery, where he was entrusted with the government of the novices, was afterwards ordained priest in the year 814, and at last chosen abbot of Fulda, in 822. After he had managed this charge twenty years, he voluntarily quitted it, to satisfy the monks, who complained that his studies so engrossed his time that the affairs of the monastery were neglected. He retired to Mount S. Peter, and was shortly after chosen archbishop of Mainz or Mayence, in the year 847. He held a council in the same year for the reformation of discipline; and died in 856.

As a mystical interpreter to Holy Scripture, his commentaries will ever be read. He was a voluminous writer on various subjects, sacred and profane, and was certainly one of the most learned men of his day.

S. NICOLAS OF THE STUDIUM, C.

(A. D. 868.)

[Greek Menæa for this day. Authorities:--Life by a contemporary monk in his monastery.]

This glorious confessor was born in Crete, and was the son of pious parents, who educated him from earliest infancy in the fear of God. At the age of ten he was sent to Constantinople, to see his kinsman Theophanes. He found him a monk of the order of the Sleepless Ones,[16] in the monastery called the Studium. He entered the same order, and fulfilled his monastic duties with regularity and devotion. Having set a brilliant example, he was deemed worthy to be invested with the priesthood. Then broke out the furious persecution of the Iconoclasts, about which a few words must be said in this place.[17]

When God was made Man, He was put at once into the most intimate relation with men; and just as it is lawful for any son to have a portrait of his father or mother, so did it become lawful and reasonable that he should have a picture of that God-Man, who is dearer to him than father or mother. The picture served as a constant reminder, an evidence for the Incarnation. It is a sermon declaring God to be made Man. But the Arians, who denied the divinity of our Lord, were most hostile to sacred representations of Christ, and with reason, for these pictures were a testimony against them. At first the Arian attack on the foundation doctrine of the Incarnation was open. But, when the theological statement of that mystery was made so plain that there was no opposing it by counter statement, Arianism adopted other tactics, and appeared as Iconoclasm, or war against sacred pictures. He who disbelieved, or only coldly acquiesced in the Incarnation of God, saw that this chief corner-stone of Christianity could only be uprooted by chilling the ardour of Christian affection. And no better method of chilling that affection could be devised, than the obliteration of representations of Christ, His acts, His passion, and of His mother, and His Saints; then there was some prospect of religious acceptance of this dogma sinking into cold intellectual apprehension, and thence it could be dislodged without difficulty. After the reconciliation of large congregations of Gnostics and Arians with the Catholic Church, they maintained that icy worship which had preceded their separation, they adored God as a Spirit, but actually, though they had ceased to do so formally, overlooked His manhood. These reconciled bodies afforded a fund of passive prejudice and aversion of small account so long as Catholic princes were on the throne, but which, in the fortune of a soldier, might produce serious results to the Church.

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the Emperor Leo III., who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended to the throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and he held it to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to the devotion of the people. But it was impossible on either side to check the rapid though adverse impulses of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their votaries, and exasperated their enemies. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence, as well as the use of sacred pictures; images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and this topic involved the East and West in an angry conflict of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by the authority of a General Council; but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine Copronymus. This council was attended by three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia, but not by those of the Western Church, African Church, or that of Palestine. It was, in fact, an assembly of those prelates who were weak enough to assist, fearing condemnation and exile if they did not submit, ambitious enough to follow the caprice of the reigning emperor, in hopes of emolument, and also of those who heartily concurred with his semi-Arianism. After a serious deliberation of six months, the prelates subscribed such a decree as the emperor desired, condemning all visible symbols of Christ,[18] except the Eucharist, as blasphemous and heretical; and denouncing veneration for images as the idolatry of Paganism. "As if," says a Catholic writer of the time, "there were not this great difference between the Christian image and the heathen idol, that the latter is the thing worshipped, whereas the former is the representation of the person adored."

The first hostilities of Leo had been directed against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the palace, placed there to exhibit to all men that the emperors had bowed before the King of kings. A ladder had been placed for the assault, but it was shaken by a crowd of women and zealots, and for their opposing the execution of the mandate, severe and savage reprisals were taken. The execution of the imperial mandates were resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces, which were quelled by the military, and much blood flowed.

In the cruel persecution that ensued, the monks, ever the champions of the Incarnate God, suffered most severely. Nicolas of the Studium, together with S. Theodore, the abbot, or archimandite, of the monastery were called to suffer. Nicolas was scourged with leather thongs on the back and limbs, and his arms extended, so that they became for a time paralysed. His back, which was lashed and bleeding, was tenderly bathed with warm water and healing lotions by S. Theodore, his superior, till it was healed. Both were driven into exile, and kept for three years in nakedness, and without sufficient food and drink, in a wretched prison. They were beaten again at Smyrna, and further imprisoned for twenty-two months, with their feet in the stocks. On the death of Leo, the confessors were released, and visited S. Nicephorus at Chalcedon. This took place during the absence of Constantine Copronymus, who had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens. During this absence, his kinsman, Artavasdus, assumed the purple, and everywhere the sacred images were triumphantly restored. Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended at the head of the bold Isaurians, and his final victory placed the unfortunate Catholics once more at the mercy of a brutal tyrant. This monster of crime derived his name Copronymus from having defiled his baptismal font. This incident of his infancy was accepted as an augury of his maturity, and he did not belie it. His reign was one long butchery of whatever was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his empire. In person the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims, surveyed their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or mutilated by his royal hand. His long reign was distracted with clamour, sedition, conspiracy, mutual hatred, and sanguinary revenge. The hatred borne by this ruffian against monks and images was implacable. Images were torn down and defaced with wanton malice throughout the empire by an officer called the Dragon, sent round for that purpose; all religious communities were dissolved, their buildings were converted into magazines or barracks; the lands, moveables, and cattle, were confiscated, and the monks were mutilated in eyes and ears and limbs, with refined cruelty.

Under this emperor, Theophilus (829), Nicolas and Theodore again suffered persecution. Theodore, and the abbot Theophanes, kinsman of Nicolas, were mutilated by certain verses being cut upon their brows. During the persecution, S. Nicolas remained concealed; on the accession of the indifferent emperor, Michael III., (842), he emerged from his hiding place, and was elected archimandite of the Studium, the abbot Theodore being dead. After exercising the government for three years, he resigned it to Sophronius, and retired to Firmopolis, that he might pass the remainder of his days in peace; but it was not so to be; after four years he was recalled to the abbacy of the Studium, on the death of Sophronius, and was at once involved in conflict. For the patriarch Ignatius, having rebuked the Cæsar Bardas for incest, and then excommunicated him, the emperor Michael III., his nephew, was persuaded to exile Ignatius, and to intrude Photius into the Patriarchal see. The abbot Nicolas refused to communicate with the intruder, and was consequently driven from his monastery, and a monk, Achillas, was appointed in his room. Nicolas was pursued from one retreat to another by the hostility of the intruded patriarch, and after many wanderings, rested in the Crimea. Upon the death of Bardas and Michael, Bardas having been murdered by his nephew Michael, and Michael by his successor, Basil I., (867), the patriarch Ignatius was recalled, and the patriarch persuaded Nicolas to return to his government of the Studium, where he died the following year.

S. REMBERT, B. C.

(A.D. 888.)

[Roman Martyrology; this being the day of his consecration to the Archbishopric of Bremen and Hamburg. But in some German Martyrologies, on June 11th, the day of his death. Authority:--his life written by a coeval author or authors].